Voting machine companies are working to avoid another 2020 election

The Anti-Election, Anti-Democracy Campaign that Sows Donald Trump’s Fossil on Social Media

Barrett says that the America PAC’s Election Integrity Community group augments the work of other election-denying groups, like former Trump adviser Cleta Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network. “This is a parallel anti-election, anti-democracy campaign designed to sow confusion and lay the groundwork for baseless objections to elections after Election Day. It’s very dangerous, and it’s happening all across the country. The results of it will be apparent when the polls close on November 5th.

The social networking service banned Trump’s account in January of 2021, after he called for violence at the Capitol. But since taking over and rebranding it as X, Musk has fired many of the people on the teams that worked to keep mis- and disinformation off the platform. X fired most of its elections integrity team last year. After the news broke, Musk posted on X, saying, “Oh you mean the ‘Election Integrity’ Team that was undermining election integrity? Yeah, they are gone.

Earlier in October, Musk appeared at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he repeated false claims that Democrats would allow undocumented immigrants to vote illegally, and encouraged Trump’s supporters to vote.

The theories of election conspiracy include everything from unauthorized immigrants voting to the fact that candidate names are changed on ballots. “It’s just an election denier jamboree,” says Paul Barrett, deputy director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University, who authored a recent report on how social media facilitates political violence.

Musk has been using his platform to share conspiracy theories about the election, which could undermine faith in the outcome. The Musk backs launched a group on X called the Election Integrity Community last week. The group has 50,000 members and is intended to be a place for citizens to report instances of voter fraud or other election-related problems.

Ed Smith still remembers the weeks after Election Day 2020. The elections compliance expert worked for voting technology provider Smartmatic at the time: a mostly low-profile company that had supplied ballot-marking devices to Los Angeles County. As the polls showed Trump losing to Joe Biden, he launched a war on the results. Companies like Smartmatic found themselves under siege.

Smith claims that the voting system was caught off guard by the volume and ferociousness of misinformation in 2020, and that there had been activists sowing doubt for years. False claims weren’t coming just from fringe figures but the then-sitting president and leader of the Republican Party. Major networks like Fox News were repeating their claims.

Election lies aren’t gone from conservative news outlets, according to the left-leaning media watchdog group Media Matters, but the tactics have changed. “The difference that we’ve seen so far in 2024 is that MAGA personalities appear to have been able to steer conversations away from specific potential defamatory claims, particularly about voting companies — even as those sorts of claims continue to circulate on social media,” Media Matters senior adviser John Whitehouse says in a statement. “The lesson for MAGA media seems to be that the core audience wants more election denial — and they’re gonna give it to them.”

Election technology companies don’t “shy away” from scrutiny, says Cutter. “But when scrutiny becomes suspicion and then public trust erodes, that’s when mis- and disinformation begins to fill the void.”

Allowing voters to look at the process themselves is something that can help, says Sara Cutter of the American Council for Election Technology. Chester County resident Jay Schneider was one of those skeptics about the election process in 2020. “To be honest, when the 2020 election came around I was thinking, ‘This seems a little sketchy, what’s been going on. In a 2023 story, he said that there was some shenanigans going around and around the country. He decided to become a judge of elections after working the polls himself, as he became so convinced of the strength of the checks and balances in the system.

Smith thinks that personal experience with the system is valuable. It would be impossible to throw the election in the manner that people are saying it is thrown, since you are aware of the checks and balances.

In Smith’s experience success in persuasion depends on the person and situation. Many people are content with learning more about the checks on the election system, but for some people it doesn’t sink in.

Part of the problem is that conspiracy theorists — including Trump and allies like Giuliani — have undercut trust in the very institutions trying to restore it. Smith says people are not “as willing to go to the Secretary of State’s website and say, ‘Oh, well, Secretary X said that vote by mail is safe, and here’s why.’ Now, people just simply don’t believe that individual.”

Some false claims may stem from misunderstandings. The industry was surprised that most of the countries use paper ballots, since some use electronic devices designed for greater accessibility.

Ensuring voting machines are secure is important, but they are just one part of a larger system. The government is the same as American elections, says Cutter. No two jurisdictions will have the same mix of technology and election administration procedures that allow them to be compromised.

To do significant nationwide damage, an attacker would need to familiarize themselves with countless combinations of hardware and software. And by the same token, a single company like Dominion couldn’t simply flip a switch to change election results because there are processes to catch machinery that’s not working as expected.

The backlash against voting tech companies is steeling their resolve and a lot of people don’t ever leave this space. But it’s still taken a toll. Some ACET members have installed extra security cameras, she says, and a few have even made emergency plans for moving offices.

They aren’t the only ones preparing for the possibility of violence. Election officials have stepped up security because of threats. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that election workers in Arizona are trained for active shooter situations, while an election office has metal detectors and armed guards. And even before Election Day, Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington, have seen fires at ballot boxes damage hundreds of ballots.

Why does it bother you that the election is rigged if you want it to be true? I still believe in America, and that’s why. I believe in our innovation, in the hope that we give the world. I am a believer in American resilience and the accountability that has been built into our systems.